Jewish Child Survives Mom’s Suicide Plunge
A Harlem mother jumped eight stories to her death with her 10-month-old son strapped to her chest —miraculously, the baby survived.
Cynthia Wachenheim, 44, landed on her back allowing baby Keston to roll away unscathed after the impact, the New York Daily News reported Wednesday.
Wachenheim, left a 13-page suicide note for her husband, Hal Bacharach, the report added.
“The note said she was not happy and she talked about what she planned to do,” a source told the Daily News.
In the note, Wachenheim is “saying to her husband, ‘I love you. I’m making you suffer. You’re going to think I’m evil,’” the source added.
From the note, largely incomprehensible according to the Daily News, police learned that Wachenheim believed her child had cerebral palsy.
Bacharach, 48, was at already at work when his wife jumped, the report stated. According to the New York Post, the couple had been arguing in their apartment at the Sutton co-op at 147th Street and Bradhurst Avenue.
“When I came home they were arguing, and I actually stopped to listen and he was screaming at her, screaming at her and the baby was crying,“ a neighbor of the couple told Pix 11 News (see video below). “He just kept saying ‘Why wouldn’t you pick up the phone? Why? Why?’”
Witnesses to the scene were badly shaken.
I heard a scream, a scared scream,” witness Steven Dominguez, 18, told the New York Post. “I noticed a woman was falling. As she was coming down, she was coming down on her back. I saw the baby bounce on her chest and fall to the concrete. The baby started crying.”
A volunteer emergency recovery unit was called to the scene to gather the victims remains, to honor the Jewish precept of burying a body whole.
According to the Daily News report, a police source said the mother was taking antidepressants, possibly pointing to post-partum depression.
Wachenheim, a graduate of Columbia Law School was “on maternity leave from her $118,000-a-year job in the city court system,” the report added. She worked there for over 15 years. She attended B’nai Jeshurun and volunteered with the American Jewish World Service. She had also worked in Pakistan, advocating for women’s rights.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30